A vacation day...(yes, another one!)

It is extremely difficult for me to take any substantive vacation during the first quarter of the fiscal year (July 1 - Sept 30) due to reporting deadlines and other projects, so my four weeks of vacation get squished into the next nine months. We have a "use it or lose it" policy, and I'm certainly not going to lose any. This is my last day for this fiscal year. No great big plans for the weekend, except for a BBQ tonight with friends and a graduation party out on a farm tomorrow.

Random stuff from the day so far:

• Went to Panera early, as usual - pretty crowded for a Friday. Worked on the lesson for next week's Tuesday study, and the lesson plan for my Saturday group's study. I'll have to share some about those soon - the Tuesday study in particular is making me think - and ultimately change some behaviors. We're going through Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, if you're interested.
• I could wander in Half Price Books forever. I went to sell some quilting books (we'll deal with why I needed to have so many books, when some I've only gone through once or twice, at a future date. Methinks this is a bit of a sin problem), and spent quite a while getting lost in ephemera. I found a paperback of an old Ngaio Marsh mystery under it's original (British) title, piano music for the themes from each one of the Harry Potter movies, and old Barbara Michaels suspense novels whose covers said "Elizabeth Peters writing as Barbara Michaels" - to get the joke, you need to know that both names are pen names for Barbara Mertz, whose Elizabeth Peters mysteries have enjoyed great commercial success.
• Aldi simply rocks. A new one opened closer to home, so I stopped in to pick up pasta salad kits for my contribution to the BBQ tonight ($0.99 each). I spent $20.89, and have enough food for the next week and a half.
• I royally messed up - I thought the NASCAR Busch series weekend at the fair park was next weekend; it's this weekend. It's not so much that I hate NASCAR - I did go to the race the inaugural year (was bored to tears) - but the crowds create incredible congestion in the city. The Fair Park has built on much of the old parking lot, raising the rate on the remaining ones to an exorbitant (for Milwaukee) rate. Combined with the use of part of the parking area for hospitality tents, it forces the crowd to park in the neighborhoods nearby. I don't mind the parked cars; it's the drunk fans coming back to the cars after the race that are the problem. Well, it's only going to be 65 degrees today, and breezy. Can we hope they drink coffee?

Better get to it - a quilt top is calling my name!